There is one movie coming out this year which is giving arcades plenty of attention and that is TRON Legacy. While it has been a little while since the last bit of viral marketing took place (with a live event unveiling Space Paranoids Online), a part of the campaign has taken place with a few lucky people getting their hands on these Encom Arcade postcards. I like the element that should be on all arcade flyers or posters – “Now playing at your local arcade”. All of the postcards include some special codes on the back which are supposed to reveal something that is part of the campaign but I have not read about anyone cracking this particular code quite yet.

These games are all part of the TRON universe of course – in reality no such games exist but as this viral campaign continues I find myself with the continual hope that some sort of real arcade project comes out of it. I know it’s unlikely but you never know. In fact I have been designing a few TRON related arcade games and cabinets, just doodling out some thoughts in my little spare time that I plan on making a post out of here soon, looking at the kind of modern arcade games they could do using the TRON universe.

As for the fake games you see above, what real games do you think they best compare to? Astro Gunner and KrazBot look like clones of Asteroids and Tempest respectively. Not sure about Arc Wars and Vice Squad reminds me of Atari’s Cops N’ Robbers, A.P.B. and Midway’s Spy Hunter. Maybe they will be creating online versions of these titles as well, assuming that Space Paranoids Online has done well.

We should be hearing a lot more about TRON Legacy at Comic-Con next month.

UPDATE: I received a Kraz-Bot card in the mail yesterday, obviously if you got one of those Encom badges or have signed up on Flynn Lives with a mailing address then you should be getting one around now.

Owen Rubin and I were working on a freeware PC game a few years ago, called Astro Gunner (I did the programming; Owen critiqued and added his own design ideas). There were elements of Moon Shuttle (Nichibutsu/Taito), Galaga, and Astro Blaster, and included some pretty sweet powerups and special weapons. It’s too bad I only finished a couple of waves before real life kicked in for both Owen and I, and we put it on hold. I may revisit it for my next Dreamcast game, however. It was coming along quite nicely and was a lot of fun. I’ll probably change the name, though. Funnily enough, the poster shows, in an abstract sort of way, similar gameplay elements of our project…

I think I have an old WIP version somewhere (digs through old data backups…)…

Oh… I have to add: in true Owen fashion, the game also had “vector” graphics; actually, they were motion objects (I refuse to call them “sprites” and will always call them by their true, Atari-assigned name 🙂 ) made to look like vectors…